The Amygdala Interface #1

Disclaimer: For those of you who prefer my nonfiction content, please feel free to skip this one. It has some graphic gore (bad things happen to eyeballs) and sci-fi elements (the true horror is my dubious understanding of the science part of sci-fi).

Without hesitation, she plunged her fingers into the gaping hole where the man's right eye used to be. The ruined socket gave in easily as her skin dove into the cold and yielding gelatinous mass inside his otherwise unmarred skull.

The cause of death was clear. A man, certified, or so he claimed, to perform anything from tattoos to autopsies at this intergalactic trading outpost, removed a dagger with an intricately carved handle before she arrived. The 'doctor' likely wasn't aware of the words 'medical license,' judging from his bloated face and purple tint of his clammy skin; tell-tale signs of a cryo-popper. He now idled on the opposite side of the room, wiping random surgical instruments on his greasy leather pants.

The crude yet beautiful weapon lay next to the victim's head, its blade bent from colliding with an unyielding bone.

Cautiously, as if she expected the man to jolt up and complain about the disrespect, she fired up her tactile implants. Connecting to a damaged neural system had been close to magic on a good day, and visiting an outer rim world didn't add to her mood.

Artificial filaments in her fingertips buzzed briefly, almost as if her elbow had made sudden contact with a malicious piece of furniture. After the initial wave of discomfort - she could never tell if it came from the science behind her modification or the sentimental nature of her still-human heart - she felt it clearly.

Felt was probably the closest word to describe the sensation. The gyri and sulci that shaped the man's life unraveled under her touch, a topographic map of everything that made him a person.

Underneath, burrowing deep inside the parenchyma, a few hard nodules dug into her senses like a splinter jammed into a nailbed.

Cancer. Probably not advanced enough to cause problems when his chest and mind still rose above the stillness of death.. And most certainly not capable of ramming a blade into his face.

Some neural pathways felt stretchy and unusually elastic. She briefly considered the anatomical strangeness, but she wasn't here to diagnose. She was here to relive.

His brain seemed intact enough for her to get a good reading.

She gazed at his face one more time, greying stubble covered in dried rivers of several bodily fluids. One pale eye turned towards the harsh light of the makeshift autopsy room.

She mouthed a mournful 'sorry' before shutting her eyes.

"Ready to initiate the stream," she said, her shaky voice echoing between the grimy walls and wobbly shelves full of dubiously legal substances.

"Alright, starting the recording," responded Officer Knox from the hallway. As one of the few members of the local intergalactic force, he was more than happy to limit his involvement. He squatted next to a portable holo-display, cautious not to touch more of the clinic's surface than absolutely necessary.

She willed the transmitter awake, ensuring Officer Knox could capture all the footage, then started the decryption with one last steadying breath.

The man's memories flooded into her awareness, leaving her no time to gradually dip her toes into this new sea of consciousness.

She became two bodies at once, two minds that never passed each other, now locked in the most intimate embrace.

The holo display streamed the fragments of visual and auditory inputs that the complicated machinery in her head translated, but she couldn't escape the other senses - those not needed for evidence but crucial to human experience.

The cold dampness of his sleeveless t-shirt, the smell of sweat and rotting fish meat. The ridges of the carved dagger handle in his palm. He'd carved it himself, from the bone of the biggest fucking whale - his first Astrocetacea kill, her brain hastily added. It depicted a crude animal shape, apparently farting, and a crew of tiny astronauts attacking it with spears plasma rifles.

His mind worked differently from hers. Where she'd recall the image of a fallen space behemoth and its futile fight, his consciousness spoke in short, clipped sentences. It was enough though, more than enough. The last injustice done to an extinguished life - stealing the privacy of their final thoughts.

They stood in a quiet alleyway, silence sending shivers down both their spines. They were...afraid. A feeling only one of them knew intimately. They looked around, making sure nobody followed.

Nothing. Just walls of low makeshift steel shacks covered in excretion fluids from more species than they'd want to welcome in their- no, in HIS corner of the galaxy.

Afraid but determined, he would not lose himself to... everything is fine though.

His thoughts felt smudged and misshapen, puzzle pieces forcefully mashed together. Expected with such brain trauma this extensive. Everything is - fucking NOT - okay. Not me, not mine, not likeeverythingisFINE.

Perhaps because she was trying to make sense of this vehicle of flesh and spite she could not control, or because of how differently it processed the world, she didn't expect the searing pain that followed.

The blade's sudden hotness as it entered the eye socket punched the air from their lungs.

She felt a body, her body, collapse... But the man remained standing.

Not deep enough. Deep enough for what?!

His hand, now shakier in grip but not in resolve, pulled the dagger out, sending a fresh wave of nausea and scorching pain in all directions.

The baby blue eyeball came with it, punctured like a leaking grape. He didn't bother pulling it far enough to yank the optic nerve out.

Everything can still be fine NOT DEEP ENOUGH.

He stabbed himself again, scraping the zygomatic bone with enough force to bend the blade.

She vaguely felt her own torso pressed against the corpse, fingers still buried deep in his brain.

A high-pitched noise drowned both realities. Their neurons fired off panicked mixed signals of 'fight, fuck off, and freeze.' And 'puke'. She wasn't sure which one either body would choose.

Not. Lose.

Not. Deep.

Fine.

His hand prepared to engage this indescribable threat for a third time.

This time, she couldn't tell who the chorus of terrified no no NO NO no belonged to. The thought of the dagger about to plunge in deeper carried fear in its most primal form.

She wasn't ready, she didn't want to die, THEY didn't want to die...

No no no.

Without a warning, the neural link went black.

Her body was in motion for a split second until her back collided with something solid.

No metallic taste in her mouth, no stench of back alleys and unwashed armpits. Only darkness and the high-pitched noise.

"Snap out of it!"

Someone shook her, and she realized it was her own screaming that had ripped through the clinic's putrid silence.

The safeguards of her interfacing implants kicked in, instructing her brainstem to drown the remnants of the traumatizing connection in serotonin.

She found the courage to open her eyes. Despite everything, her subconscious mind was still trying to yell at her, both of her eyeballs were intact. She didn't reek of rotten fish. She was just Mara, the forensic interfacer.

Her gaze landed on the piercer turned medical butcher, her reluctant savior.

He must have pulled her away from the corpse, only to fling her into the corner with a very deliberate lack of gentleness. Officer Knox didn't even bother to emerge from the perceived safety of the hallway.

"So, what's the verdict? Suicide, right?" the bald 'coroner' grinned. All his teeth were replaced with jagged retractable spikes. For what purpose, Mara didn't want to know.

She recalled the patchwork of thoughts, the elasticity of his neural pathways, and the strange determination of his deed. Yes, she knew what she saw, but was she sure of what she felt?

"Can I..."

Her voice scratched the back of her throat like static of a shattered interstellar broadcast. She swallowed as hard as her dry mouth would let her.

"Can I speak to his crewmates?"

"Why? He was clearly hopped up on something; you know how fishers are. The old fucker probably thought there were whale mites behind his eyeball."

No, he didn't.

"Just following the protocol, I have to interview the witnesses."

"Suit yourself," he threw his arms in the air, now carrying a trace of human decay atop of the deceased sailor's regular odor. "I will start cutting, though."